The social basis of politics : towards a theoretical synthesis

Cooper, Andrew James (1976) The social basis of politics : towards a theoretical synthesis. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

Social Theory is conventionally taken to be synonymous with sociological theory. In this study it is interpreted in a much broader sense, as an overarching category that subsumes different levels and dimensions of methodology, epistemology and substantive hypotheses, to mean theories of Society and Politics in general.Along the continuum of Social Theory a variety of ideal-typifications of Politics can be identified. In the perspectives and procedures of orthodox Political Science Politics is abstracted from its social milieux; this takes the form of discussion, at the formalized level of Staatswissenschaft, about the institutions and mechanisms that channel and domesticate - political activity and give Politics paradigmatic meaning. The Study of Politics is regarded as the study of the exercise of influence or power to achieve a necessary uniformity of policies within a polity in the presence of what, initially, started as mutually exclusive policies.In orthodox Political Sociology, political structures axe seen as the base of society, issuing a whole set of determinations for the rest of the social system according to a straightforward monistic political determinism. Or, at the other pole of the continuum, Politics receives a reductionist treatment -- in the 'Sociology of Politics' --- so that 2-e11.its descreteness, its specificity, is de-emphasized in favour of a concept of Politics as an instantiation of 'deeper' sociological phenomena.The aim of this study is to frame a general theory of Politics based on the contention that sociological practice and the study of Politics cannot be hermetically sealed off from one another. It aims to accord to Politics a discreteness but to situate it, at the sane time, firmly in a social setting so as to suggest a discreteness of a different order to that of the conventional Political Science imput_on. The context for such a project is a broad and discursive treatment of Social Theory in accordance with the prescriptions of a version of the structuralist method; there is an attempt at a totalization of all those elements consistent with, and heuristically useful to, the central aim of founding politics theoretically. Moreover, this theory of Politics aims to achieve the Hegelian Aufhebung of existing 'thinkingabout-Politics:.)sentially a monistic political determinism and a monistic economic determinism are rejected for an approach to Politics predicated on the idea of a complex symmetry between the economic base of a society and superstructural features -- of which Politic.; is the most crucially important. Politics is not conceptualized epiphenomenally, as in * Julgar' Marxism, as a crude reflection of economic factors, but is seen as being involved in a complex system of mediations ano reciprocal interactions with the economic base. Politics is seen as residing in certain structural loci --- as the 'nodal point' of inteLration (or malintegration) of a society. Additionally, it is seen as material activity, processually diffuse and situationally variable, directed at the transformation or non-transformation of the unity of the levels iii of a society (economic, cultural, ideological et al) and at the creation, maintenance and distribution of valued social resources. Politics is neither epiphenomenal nor facultative but stands, in a literal sense, in a dialectical relationship to social environment.

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